Johnson: The Army won't pay her student debt

April 3, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Maxy Kham, 25, now works as a receptionist at the Swedish Mechanic in Irvine. She joined the Army three years ago with a promise that it would pay off her $27,000 in student loans. It is now discharging her honorably, no longer needing her service with the 272nd Medical Detachment in Garden Grove, which it is disbanding. The $27,000 promise also has been broken, leaving the Garden Grove woman seeking some way to repay it. BILL JOHNSON, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Maxy Kham, 25, joined the Army three years ago when it promised to pay the $27,000 she owed in student loans. Now, after the Army disbanded the 272nd Medical Detachment in Garden Grove where she serves, they are discharging her honorably, but refuse to make good on the loan payment. BILL JOHNSON, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Maxy Kham, 25, joined the Army three years ago on a promise that it would pay off her $27,000 in student loans. That promise vaporized earlier this year along with her unit, the 272nd Medical Detachment out of Garden Grove, as the Army shrinks in size. She now works as a receptionist at the Swedish Mechanic in Irvine in an attempt to repay the loan. BILL JOHNSON, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Maxy Kham, 25, now works as a receptionist at the Swedish Mechanic in Irvine. She joined the Army three years ago with a promise that it would pay off her $27,000 in student loans. It is now discharging her honorably, no longer needing her service with the 272nd Medical Detachment in Garden Grove, which it is disbanding. The $27,000 promise also has been broken, leaving the Garden Grove woman seeking some way to repay it.BILL JOHNSON, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

She was this tiny little woman, her head barely visible above the tall receptionist desk.

My car had needed an oil change. She signed me in. I waited.

I could never, I quickly realized, do her job. Had I been her, I for sure would have slugged the guy who'd gotten there before me, the one who, enraged over the size of his service bill, all but cursed at her. She just took it.

The rest of the time, she sat, and sat. And she sat some more. It was just the two of us in the waiting room. Occasionally she would answer the phone.

"I get here at 7:30," she answered when I broke the monotony by doing what I always do. Asking questions. Quitting time is 4:30 p.m. Wow, I thought.

Her name was Maxy Kham, she told me.

Well, sort of. I'll let her explain.

"My mom kind of liked the French 'merci,' but not enough, so she twisted it around. It's kind of grown on me, Maxy. It's a love-hate relationship, I guess.

"My last name is Khamdaranikone. Sometimes it gets me the wrong kind of attention. In the Army, you don't want to go by that big last name. I don't want the attention of the higher ranks. They look at it, and it's always, 'How do you pronounce it?'"

Wait, you're in the Army? Kham, 25, nodded her head.

"Always cover your own behind," she said, beginning her explanation. "That's the biggest lesson I learned this year. I used to do things for people, expecting nothing in return. It bit me right in the behind."

It all goes back to 2010. Her mother, who came from Thailand, had given her full run of the Green Spa in Redondo Beach, one of several spas she had owned. Kham had just completed two years of nursing school, but figured she'd give the spa thing a run.

It lasted about a year, before the spa fell victim to the economy. She was lost, yet what remained true was the $27,000 she owed in student loans from nursing school.

She thought of her options, and almost immediately the image of her cousin arrived.

"She was of pretty high rank – master sergeant," Kham recalled. "I always thought joining the Army like her would be something I could do."

Her mother was aghast at the mere thought, as were her older sisters, Anna and Christine, the ones who she says got the normal names.

"I always do what I want, especially when someone tells me I can't," she explained.

She went to the recruiting station, was told the Army would pay off the $27,000 in exchange for six years of service. There were no medic spots open, they told her, but how about patient administration?

Deal, Kham told the recruiter.

She remembers Aug. 10, 2011, the day she arrived at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, the way the temperature felt negative-something when she stepped off the bus.

"They were yelling at us," she recalled, "but I figured I had 27,000 reasons to look past it. I will admit that 'What have I gotten myself into?' did cross my mind, but kept telling myself I was already here, that there was no going back."

Multiple recruits washed out that first night. Kham was determined not to be one of them. She'd gotten herself into top condition in the months before that bus trip. She could handle what was thrown at her.

In the months that followed, Kham wanted to go home every day. "I had an angel and a devil on each shoulder: Go. Stay," she said.

There was the sleep deprivation, the sheer exhaustion, how her mind was so dazed she rarely knew the time or what day it was.

Finally, she made it. Maybe it was because she was older then, not some homesick teenager like the washouts. She was "Private First Class K," a woman who had figured herself out by then, who she was, what she wanted out of life.

She returned home, assigned to the 272nd Medical Detachment out of Garden Grove. She had been given a new start. The Army, which had agreed to pay off that $27,000, washed her slate clean. Or so she thought.

At the first of this year, the Army informed her that the 272nd would be no more. She would be honorably discharged with three years of service for financial hardship reasons.

Yet since she hadn't put in the six years, and because her recruiter did not put it in her service contract, she was told the Army would not pay off the student loan.

"I found my recruiter on Facebook and wrote him a whole letter," Kham said. "It wasn't mean or nasty, just how could he do that? At the end, I told people never to again use that recruiting station."

Her first sergeant has told her the government's paying off the loans "is never going to happen." She is now in the process of writing the inspector general to plead her case.

"I keep rewriting the letter. I haven't sent it yet," she said. "I keep finding flaws in it, and I want it to come from my heart, not just another recruiter-screwed-over-a-recruit letter. I went in honestly. I want to live my mom's dream, the reason why she came here, for opportunity."

She took the job at the Irvine auto mechanic while she figures her next move.

The loan is in collection now.

"It's ironic. The federal government that was supposed to pay the $27,000 for me, now says I owe them the $27,000. It goes back to that first thing I told you. You can only look out for yourself."

Any regrets?

"I have had irreplaceable experiences and memories from the Army. It has built my character a lot. For me to say I regret any of it would be negating all those moments and pushing away all those people I've met," Kham said.

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